Sunday, June 15, 2014

Detective Comics #297 - Nov. 1961

Comics Weekend "Aqualad, Stand-In For A Star" by Jack Miller and Nick Cardy(?).

It's Adventure Sunday!

Aquaman becomes one the worst things in the world--a show-biz parent!

When it comes time to film the close-ups, Barry resumes his position on the whale. Aqualad is cheesed off that Barry is taking all the credit, but Aquaman explains that, of course, that's his job as the actor. This doesn't mollify the lad, and he gets so mad he decides to tell Barry that he can do his own stunts from now on!

But as soon as Aqualad jumps into the water, he's caught in the net that fell from the ship, and is stuck in the path of an old war mine!

...and so ends another adventure for Aquaman and Aqualad!

Of course, young Barry Blaine never appeared again. Let's hope he got out of the movie business and settled into a life a little less damaging for a young kid.

Mike's Amazing World credits the art to this story to regular Aquaman artist Nick Cardy, but one look can tell you this is clearly not his work. If anything, it looks a bit like Sheldon Moldoff, who was doing the honors on the Batman lead feature. I can't be sure, anyone have a better idea?

4 comments:

The source I've been using for all those Superboy story summaries (DarkMark's site) lists ones for Aquaman too... it claims it's Sheldon Moldoff's artwork. Comics.org also claims Moldoff.

Wondering if "Sea Boy" is meant to be some Earth-1 version of a then-contemporary TV show or movie, given the ocean was highly popular for media in the 50s/60s. Though if anything, it felt more like someone just wanted to make an Aqualad film and didn't want to chip in for rights to the real deal. ("Five percent" indeed :-p ).

Speaking of Moldoff's lead "Detective" effort...

Re: Batman: the Dynamic Duo trail a gangster to the island of Koba Bay, where they find him supposedly killed by a legendary beast that lurks in its waters.